


R & R

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [36]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:05:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7332397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the weeks after the Battle of New York, the Avengers go their separate ways for a bit.  It’s a time to rest and recover, a time to work, a time to deal with other obligations.  Above all, it’s a time to adjust to the new normal (or what passes for normal when you’re a superhero).</p>
            </blockquote>





	R & R

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and kudos in great abundance go to my amazing beta, **like_a_raven.**
> 
> This fic could easily have been titled, _In Which the Avengers Have Their Emotional Temperature Taken._ I had initially planned to jump straight into their first mission together, post-Battle of New York. However, I quickly realized that each of them was dealing with so much on the adjustment front that it was best to break that out into its own fic. (Or two.) So, I hope you don’t mind a bit of character development before we dive into anything plot-heavy.
> 
> Time-wise, this fic overlaps a bit with _The Girl Who Waited,_ by **like_a_raven.**

_May 2012_

**Thor**  
**Asgard**

In the Royal Palace of Asgard, the nightly feast in the Great Hall was always a loud, crowded, merry affair. It didn’t matter if it was a celebration of a great victory or just the end of a mundane day. To dine under the king’s roof was to experience a foretaste of Valhalla. That had been the tradition for millennia. 

Thor was in little mood for the celebratory atmosphere tonight. In truth, he hadn’t been since he’d returned. He’d been victorious on Midgard. He’d brought Loki home alive. Thanks to his arguments and those of Queen Frigga and the Doctor, the sentence of death for treason had been commuted. Still, Thor took little joy in the fact that his brother, however much trouble he had caused, would be confined to the dungeons for the rest of his life.

He slipped away from the feast with an almost imperceptible nod of understanding from his mother. Thor knew that were it not for duty, she would be taking her meals in the privacy and quiet of her room. Loki’s imprisonment was not an easy burden for her either.

Thor left the palace and turned his steps toward the most peaceful place on Asgard: Heimdall’s Observatory. He walked along the Bifrost Bridge, noting with satisfaction that the repairs were very near completion. Soon, the path to the other Realms would be open again. 

He found Heimdall at his post, standing at the large, round observation window, looking out over the cosmos.

“Good evening, Heimdall,” Thor said, joining his old friend.

“Thor.” Heimdall turned away from the window long enough to nod a greeting. “You come again. Are you thinking of setting aside your hammer in favor of becoming a watchman?”

“Hardly,” Thor chuckled. “Certainly not if matters on Vanaheim and Alfheim are growing as disorderly as you say.”

For centuries, Asgard had helped to keep the peace on those worlds. Some marauders had taken advantage of the fact that the Bifrost had been damaged, preventing the Asgardian forces from traveling off-world. The Warriors Three had spoken of little else at the feast tonight. They were eager to get back to work.

“It is nothing that you and Warriors cannot soon make right,” Heimdall said. He gave Thor a knowing look. “But I gather that it’s a different world that holds your attention again tonight.”

The gears within the Observatory’s machinery shifted, moving the observation window a quarter turn to the left, until it framed Earth.

_Midgard,_ Thor reminded himself. He’d fallen into thinking of the planet by its native name.

“Have you looked in on Jane tonight?” he asked.

“Yes. She’s doing much the same as you are,” Heimdall said. “Watching other worlds.”

Thor nodded. He hadn’t seen Jane while he was on Earth. There had been too many other matters to attend to, and he had not wanted to delay returning Loki to Asgard any longer than necessary. Hopefully, soon, he’d be able to remedy that.

“What of the others?” he asked.

It didn’t escape Thor’s attention that Heimdall gave him a long, measured glance before replying.

“Your new comrades in arms. The Avengers.” It wasn’t a question. This was not the first time Thor had asked Heimdall to turn his gaze in that direction since he’d gotten back. “They’re well. They are healing, I believe, each in their own way.” 

“Good.”

“You plan to go back there, then?” Heimdall said. 

“They have asked me to be one of them,” Thor replied. “To help keep the peace. Given the trouble Asgard has brought them, it seems a fair request.”

“That will not sit well with the king.”

“Oh, believe me, it doesn’t.”

Thor had already discussed the matter with his father. That was another reason Thor hadn’t been eager to linger in the Great Hall.

_“You have responsibilities,” Odin had said. “There are already worlds that depend on you. Let the Midgardians sort out their own troubles. They should not presume to have any claim on Asgard’s might.”_

_“Why do you persist in speaking of them as if they are beneath us?” Thor had asked._

_“That they are beneath us is simple fact. Their lives are fleeting, their civilization is primitive, and their problems do not concern us.”_

_“I do not share your opinion,” Thor had replied. “I have fought alongside them, enough to know that they are as brave and honorable as any Asgardian warrior. As for their worthiness? The Doctor looks upon their world as a second home. He holds the humans in high esteem. If the last living Time Lord affords them such honor, who are we to say they are unworthy?”_

Thor smiled slightly without humor. Odin had not appreciated that line of argument. The King of Asgard honored the Doctor as the last of the Time Lords. On some level, Thor was sure, he even liked the Doctor. But Odin’s affection for the Doctor often ended where it conflicted with his own will.

“Father will grow accustomed to the idea.” Thor didn’t plan on giving him a choice.

Heimdall laughed quietly.

“I imagine he rues the day he ever banished you to that world,” he said. “And yet he cannot deny that it has been the making of you.”

“So you approve?” Thor asked.

Heimdall was an old and loyal friend, and Thor valued his opinion. It might not carry the same weight as Odin’s, but Heimdall had a distinct advantage. Due to the very nature of his duty, he looked beyond Asgard. He was able to see what humans called “the bigger picture.”

“I do,” Heimdall said. “You have grown in good sense if not wisdom since you first walked on Midgard. The humans bring out good things in you. You’re rather like the Doctor in that respect, and I’m not sure I can offer higher praise than that.”

“Thank you, Heimdall.”

Thor turned his gaze again to the blue world framed in the observation window. He would go back, though not immediately. He _did_ have responsibilities here, and Thor had no intention of shirking them, but he would go back soon. 

In the meantime, Heimdall would keep watch over the Avengers.

*****

**River Song**  
 **New York, SHIELD HQ**

“There. I think that does it,” River said.

She gave the comforter one final tug to smooth out the wrinkles, then straightened up to survey the bedroom of her and Clint’s new shared quarters. Operation Move-In was just about complete.

SHIELD Headquarters didn’t have married-officers’ quarters _per se._ Plenty of agents and personnel were married and had families of course. The on-base child care facility was always full, but there were so many options for housing in the NYC area that family quarters weren’t a priority. The agents who did live on base were predominantly single. Clint and River had each had individual quarters that were perfectly comfortable for full-time living, even taking into account that they had been cohabitating for years now. 

These new quarters had been a surprise, something that Coulson had set up for them not long after River had left for her mission in Russia back in February. It was still a fairly simple one-bedroom apartment, but half again as large as their individual quarters had been, with a view of one of the grassy quads. Coulson had sprung it on them earlier that week, when he’d been moved from Mount Sinai Hospital to the infirmary on the SHIELD base.

“Call it an engagement present,” he’d said when he’d presented them with their access passes. “I’d offer to help you move, but the doctors will barely let me go to the bathroom on my own. They’ll probably slap me in restraints if I suggest carrying boxes.”

Fortunately, Clint and River didn’t have to move very far, or very much. For a pair of independent adults, they didn’t have a lot of _stuff._ Except for books. Between the two of them, River thought, they really did own a ridiculous number of books. 

She heard a thump and some muffled cursing coming from the bathroom.

“Is the shower curtain fighting back?” River called.

“No.” There was another thump. “Yeah, but I’ve got it.” A few seconds later, Clint emerged. “Okay. The bathroom is secure,” he said, flopping down on the bed.

“I just made that, you know.” River grinned, however, when Clint reached up, caught her hand, and pulled her down with him. River made herself comfortable, stretched out on her back using Clint’s midsection as a pillow. “So, it’s the end of an era. No more sneaking into each others’ quarters.”

“I’m pretty sure we stopped bothering to sneak after the first six months.” Clint chuckled. “Remember the first time Phil let himself into my quarters unannounced after we started sleeping over?”

River laughed. “Yes, the first and _last_ time.” Never let it be said that Phil Coulson didn’t learn from his mistakes. It had taken Phil a little while in the beginning to warm up to the relationship between his two agents, but he _had_ always done his best to treat it respectfully.

“So, Dr. Levine asked me yesterday when the wedding’s going to be,” Clint said.

“Right. Wedding,” River said. “I suppose we ought to be putting some thought into that.”

It wasn’t like she’d forgotten that she and Clint were getting married. They’d gotten engaged shortly after Christmas, but a lot had happened since then. Clint had had to go back to his post at the Tesseract research facility. River had been sent on a deep cover assignment in Russia. Loki had landed and all hell had broken loose, and they were just now starting to recover. Wedding planning hadn’t even crossed River’s mind. 

“Yeah. Apparently, weddings are usually a part of the whole _getting married_ process.” Clint sounded amused. “That’s the word on the street, anyway.”

“Always a source of useful intelligence,” River replied. “Well, personally, I’d like to vote for something small. I’m not a big, fussy wedding sort of person. At the same time, I feel like we’ve both earned something more than just signing documents at the courthouse and calling it a day. I’d like our friends to be there.”

It would hardly be a crowd. Their circle of people was very small, and thus every member of it was important to them.

“So, we can set up something after Phil comes off the disabled list,” Clint said.

“Oh, absolutely. We’re not getting married without Phil.”

Phil was family. Families and weddings went together.  


It was funny how the universe worked out sometimes. River had a family now when, just twelve short years ago, she had resigned herself to a life of solitude and isolation. It had been after her first (from her perspective) encounter with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory. That had been the day she’d learned exactly how badly she’d been manipulated by the “family” that had raised her, the Silence and the Academy of the Question.  


River had found herself being doubly abandoned that day. Her lifelong guardians had been using her for their own ends. And the family she’d finally found, after a lifetime of waiting to meet them, had walked away from her. Amy and Rory had left her—weak, newly regenerated, and newly mortal—in a London hospital. River remembered wanting to beg them not to go, but she hadn’t even had the strength to open her eyes.  


Before they’d gone, the Doctor had whispered a message in River’s ear. _There’s going to come a time when you’ll think you’re finished, when you’ll think your life is over. That will be just the beginning._ River had had no idea at the time what he could possibly mean. She couldn’t go back to the Academy and her parents were leaving her. She was alone. She would be alone for the rest of her life.

Five years later she’d met Clint and Phil and they had brought her to SHIELD. She had found a new home, a new purpose, and a new family. The Doctor’s parting words to her had finally made sense. 

Clint brought his hand up to rest on top of hers. “Did I lose you, there?” he asked. “Or have I put you to sleep?”

River smiled. “No. I was just thinking.”

“About?”

“Fate. Destiny. Providence.”

“A lot of shit you don’t believe in,” Clint said. 

“True.” There was nothing like being raised by a cult to sour a person on the idea of destiny. “And I know it seems a wee bit mad, but I can’t help but feel like we’ve wound up right where we’re supposed to be.”

“Getting married?”

“That, yes,” River replied. Hell, the odds of her and Clint ever meeting in the first place had been astronomical. “And SHIELD. Even the Avengers.”

“You think we were meant to be Avengers?”

River could hear the note of skepticism in Clint’s voice. She knew that Clint still had some lingering reservations about their newly assigned team, coupled with doubts about himself in the wake of Loki’s brainwashing. River had her own concerns about their new team situation, but she was much more sanguine about it than Clint.

“Maybe,” River said lightly. “It’s not logical, just a feeling. And like I said, probably a wee bit mad.”

“Yeah, well,” Clint squeezed her hand, “what about our lives isn’t a little crazy?”

“I can’t think of a single thing.”

*****

**Tony Stark**  
 **New York, Stark Tower**

Genius never slept. That was Tony’s excuse for being up at three o’clock in the morning.

“How’s the sky looking tonight, Jarvis?” Tony asked as he pulled up another schematic of one of the recovered Chitauri speeders.

“Quiet and clear, sir,” Jarvis replied. “Air traffic out of LaGuardia and JFK has resumed normal frequency and patterns. Three private helicopters are currently en route to helipads in the city. Atmospheric conditions are normal, though we should expect some rain by morning.”

“Good deal. No signs of dimensional rift activity?”

“None whatsoever, sir.”

“Good. They just finished repairing the patio,” Tony muttered. 

Bruce claimed that the odds that another interspatial portal would open up over Stark Tower were unlikely. In other words, the fact that a portal had opened there once wouldn’t leave a weak spot, a place where an invading army could punch through again. Eric Selvig had concurred.

Well, Bruce would know better than Tony. Tony was (in his not so humble opinion) the world’s most brilliant mechanical engineer, and not too shabby at software design either. But when it came to physics, including the type of physics that wasn’t so theoretical anymore, Bruce was not nearly as renowned as he should be. If he said that a portal wasn’t going to open up over them while they slept, Tony trusted him.

What he _didn’t_ trust was anything else connected to that damn wormhole. 

“If I may, sir,” Jarvis said, “by my calculations, you’ve slept approximately twelve hours over the last four days.”

“Aw, J. Are you worried about me?”

It was no surprise to Tony that Jarvis had been monitoring his sleeping (or lack thereof) patterns. Pepper probably was too, though she hadn’t brought it up. Yet. 

Tony had tried to sleep. When he stopped to consider it, yeah, he was exhausted. But he’d rather be exhausted than dream. He kept dreaming about the wormhole. He dreamed about flying through it. He dreamed about what he’d seen on the other side: an entire Chitauri fleet, just waiting take a crack at Earth.

Earth had been invaded and it could, likely _would,_ happen again. Tony was sure of that much. Maybe not by an Asgardian with a conquer-the-world complex, maybe not by the Chitauri, but it would happen. The truth was out there and it was fucking terrifying. 

But they had an advantage now. They were forewarned, and that meant that they could prepare for trouble. The Avengers was a good start. Tony was happy enough now to be on board with Fury’s little dream team, but people weren’t enough. They were going to need the appropriate weapons, and no one did weapons better than Tony Stark.

The shop was officially reopened. Dad would be so proud.

Tony was surrounded by holograms of early-stage weapons and defensive devices incorporating recovered Chitauri technology. There were several guns. Guns were easy. There was a power cell that Tony was pretty sure he could incorporate into the Iron Man suit. The speeders had come with a sort of rudimentary shielding that he knew he could improve upon. They’d need to play both offense and defense to keep another invasion at bay. That meant that Tony had a lot of work ahead of him.

“Sir.” Jarvis broke into his thoughts again. “You have a telephone call.”

Tony felt a loud THUMP of panic in his chest. _It’s a phone call,_ he told himself in disgust. Sure, a phone call at 3:30 in the morning couldn’t be anything good, but that was no reason to lose it.

“Who is it?”

“Meg Downing, sir, calling from Toronto.”

Tony let loose a short (totally _not_ mildly hysterical) laugh, bracing his hands momentarily on the edge of his worktable. Probably not a global emergency, then.

“Put her through.” Tony waited until he heard the tell-tale sound of the line opening. “Aunt Meg! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Anthony,” Meg Downing replied. She sounded a little amused. She sounded that way fairly often, at least when she talked to Tony. He wasn’t sure why. “You’re up very late.”

“And yet you’re calling me.”

“I knew that if you were actually asleep, Jarvis would have taken a message. And if you weren’t asleep, you might be in the mood to talk.”

“Shouldn’t _you_ be in bed?” When in doubt, deflect. Besides, it was a fair question. “Aren’t you up way past lights out?”

“It’s a retirement home, Anthony, not a boarding school. Besides, you should know by now that I keep odd hours.” Her voice softened a fraction, so subtly that someone who hadn’t known her for decades would probably miss it. “I just wanted to check in, make sure you were doing all right.”

Tony smiled a little sentimentally since Aunt Meg couldn’t actually _see_ him.

Meg Downing and his dad had gone way back, beyond even the founding of SHIELD. Howard Stark’s best friend from his MIT days had been Meg’s older brother, Jamie, a Canadian naval officer who had died during World War II. Howard and Meg had pretty much adopted each other as siblings at some point. They had looked out for each other through the war, the early days of SHIELD, and beyond. Hell, Meg had been the one who had set Tony’s parents up.

She hadn’t been around a ton while Tony was growing up. By the time he had come along she had been SHIELD’s Director, and therefore a very busy woman. Plus, Aunt Meg had never exactly been a kid person. She didn’t seem to know what to do with them until they hit the age of seven or eight and were capable of something resembling reason. Still, while she might not be the warmest and fuzziest of people, she cared. Tony had never doubted that. The people who mattered to Meg Downing mattered a hell of a lot, and Tony was on her list.

“I’m fine, Aunt Meg,” he said. “I just have a lot of ideas in the hopper right now. SHIELD’s been sending over bits and pieces of the Chitauri tech. You know how I am with new toys.”

“I do seem to recall a few post-Christmas obsessions.”

Tony grinned. Aunt Meg had always been a bit of a smart-ass. He liked that about her. He also liked the fact that she didn’t break out the metaphorical thumbscrews when expressing concern. If you said “I’m fine” she might not _believe_ you, but she wouldn’t press the matter, either.

“Your father was just the same,” she added. “He’d get fixated on a project and spend three or four straight days in the lab.”

“I remember.” Not exactly fondly, but Tony did remember that about Howard.

“How’s Virginia?” Meg asked.

“You know, you’re the only person on the planet who calls her that,” Tony replied. He thought a little guiltily of Pepper, sleeping up in the penthouse. He’d fallen into a pattern of waiting until she drifted off, then slipping out of bed and coming down here to work. “She’s good. She’s great, actually.”

“That woman is very good for you.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Tony said. He knew that he’d seriously lucked out in the Pepper department. “So, when are you heading down for a visit?”

“I thought perhaps in the fall,” Meg replied. “There’s nothing quite like the High Holy Days in New York.”

“I kind of thought you’d be here already, offering Fury advice on Superhero Club.”

“The Avengers Initiative is Nicholas’s baby,” Meg said, “and from what I can tell, he has it well in hand.”

“So, we’re babies?”

“At my age, most people are babies,” Meg said. “At any rate, if I come to the city earlier, I’ll call ahead and let you know. Now, I probably should get to bed. Good night, Anthony. Don’t hospitalize yourself.”

Tony chuckled. “No promises, Aunt Meg. Sleep tight. I’ll catch you later.”

The call disconnected and Tony flopped down in the comfortable, beat-up leather chair he kept in a corner of his lab. He reached for his bottle of kale juice and took a long drink.

“Jarvis?”

“It is now 3:54 in the morning sir, and the skies are still clear,” Jarvis replied. “If you’d care to sleep, I’ll alert you if anything changes.”

Tony rubbed his hands over his face and considered the offer, then pushed himself up out of the chair.

“Thanks, buddy. Next time.”

Tony went to his station and got back to work.

*****

**Bruce Banner**  
 **New York, Stark Tower**

Bruce Banner had almost forgotten what it felt like to stay in one place. 

He had been on the run for years, evading authorities, living underground and on the margins. He’d assumed he would be again as soon as his short service to SHIELD was done. Fury had promised him that he would be free to go once the Tesseract was secured. _In the wind._ Bruce had had every intention of leaving as soon as the dust from the battle had settled.

Somehow, that hadn’t happened. And by _somehow,_ Bruce meant _Tony Stark._

After the battle, after the Avengers had finished their shawarma, Tony had escorted Bruce to an apartment in Stark Tower and said, “Stay the night.” The next day it had been, “It’s still a mess out there. Stay through the end of the week. And come up to the lab. SHIELD sent over some pieces of Chituari technology. I’m trying to figure out what makes them tick. I could use your help.”

It was very easy to stay, and to go on staying. Bruce felt safer in Stark Tower than he’d felt anywhere in quite some time. He didn’t have to sleep with one eye open, Pepper Potts went out of her way to make him feel welcome, and Tony hadn’t been overselling the sophistication of the labs. Bruce lost many hours happily picking away at various research and development projects. Even the Other Guy felt at ease in a way that Bruce wasn’t used to.

He still balked when a messenger from Stark Industries’ legal department knocked on his door one morning and presented him with a large envelope. Inside the envelope was a glossy folder containing an official employment offer.

Bruce flipped through the paperwork with increasing disbelief. The package included a salary, benefits, vacation time, even indefinite use of the apartment he was staying in. Bruce stared at the little “sign here” flag at the bottom of the contract. 

He shook his head and went to look for Tony.

Tony was already working in the lab, music cranked, coffee brewed, and a plate of bagels set out on the side counter. Bruce was seriously starting to wonder if the other man was sleeping at all. Tony looked up and killed the music when he saw the packet in Bruce’s hand. 

“Oh, good. They got it to you,” he said. “Did you sign it? I can take it straight up to Pepper.”

“No. We, ah. . .” Bruce held the packet up. “We probably ought to talk about this.”

“Why so grim? Is there a problem?” Tony raised an eyebrow. “I mean, nothing’s set in stone. Did you want to negotiate on the salary?”

“No. God, no. The salary’s great. But Tony,” Bruce laid the packet on the worktable, “you know you don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t have to what? Don’t have to compensate you for the work you’re doing?” Tony leaned back against the table. “You know that’s largely how the real world is set up, right? Slavery is seriously frowned upon.”

“I mean you don’t have to take me on as a charity case.” 

Those two uncomfortable words had been beating around in Bruce’s brain, off and on, for days now. He’d tuned them out, telling himself that he’d enjoy the security for the moment, and think about moving on tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next.

“Charity?” Tony straightened up. “Is that what you think this is?”

Bruce suddenly got the sneaking suspicion that he’d read this situation wrong.

“One of the best scientists in the world lands on my doorstep, and you think I’m not going to try to keep him around?” No one could make a _Really, now?_ face quite like Tony Stark. “That’s not charity, Bruce. That’s good business sense.” 

“Well. . .”

“And you know that you wouldn’t even be working for me, right? If that’s something you’re worried about. I wouldn’t be your boss. Technically, you’d work for Pepper. She’s all for this, by the way.”

“I don’t. . .”

“Come on. We have lockers full of alien technology to study and a brand new Superhero Club that I don’t think they’re going to let us bow out of. Might as well embrace it, unflattering ID badge photo and all.” Tony’s words were flip, but his tone was sincere. “Stay, Bruce. We need you around here.” 

“We? You mean Stark Industries?”

“The Avengers,” Tony said. 

“Ah.” Yeah. That. Bruce picked up the folder, mostly to have something to fidget with to cover his unease. “I’m still not sure about that. I’m sure it’s a great idea, but I don’t know if I’m the right guy for it.”

“Says the man who single-handedly took down Loki,” Stark said.

“The Other Guy took down Loki,” Bruce replied. 

“So?”

“So, I’m not sure how I feel about joining a team where my role is to be a walking battering ram.”

“Then don’t let that be your role,” Tony said firmly. “At least not your only one. Look, the Hulk can throw down, and frankly I think that’s a good thing. But that’s not all you’ve got to offer.”

“If you’re about to go with _scientific genius,_ you already have that base covered,” Bruce said.

“Hey, there’s no such thing as too many science guys,” Tony replied. “And yeah, you have that going for you, but what I was going to say is that you know what it means to be on the other side.”

“The other side of what?”

“The other side of SHIELD and groups like them.” Tony folded his arms. “You were hunted by the US military and government agencies for years. Do you think you’re the only one? Yeah, the Hulk is unique, but do you really think your situation is? It’s a weird-ass world out there and getting weirder by the day. What if there are other people out there in the same mess you were in?”

Bruce just stared at Tony. He’d honestly never thought much about there being other people out there like him, people who had been made into monsters through accident or experimentation or some combination of both. He’d never looked very far past getting by from day to day without attracting attention or having an incident.

“Fury put the Avengers together to protect the world from threats that other groups can’t or shouldn’t handle,” Tony continued. “The odds are good we could run across a person like that. Who’s going to understand them better than you? And if they’re in trouble, they’re going to need someone like you on their side.”

“I’m. . .” _Honored? Humbled? Marveling at your emotional manipulation skills?_ Bruce finally just sighed. “You’re good.”

“Genius, remember?” Tony grinned. “And you know I’m right.”

Bruce did know that. He didn’t know if he knew how to live like a real person anymore. He didn’t know how he was going to adjust to working with an organization like SHIELD instead of running from it. He didn’t know what he was ever going to do with vacation time. He _did_ know that the last few years of his life wouldn’t have been so goddamn hard if he’d had someone like Tony Stark in his corner. 

Maybe if he was part of the Avengers he could keep someone else from going through the same thing.

Bruce opened the folder, looking again at the employment contract.

“You got a pen?”

*****

**Clint Barton**  
 **Rural West Virginia**

_“Look at your good work,” Loki said with a pleased smile._

_Clint looked at the carnage around him, helpless to do anything except what he was told. He was in the bowels of the burning Helicarrier and he was surrounded by corpses. The bodies of dead SHIELD personnel littered the deck._

_Loki gripped him by the shoulder and led him to the centerpiece of the destruction. Clint’s breath quickened and he tried to pull away when he saw what Loki was showing him._

_River lay dead at Clint’s feet, curled on her side. Blood matted her hair and slicked across her face in thick streaks, rimming her wide-open eyes. Phil lay next to her, arm outstretched like he’d been trying to help her. His shirt was soaked in red, a gaping wound where his heart should have been._

_“You’ll never have to worry about them again. You’re free of them.” Loki’s voice was horribly gentle. “And now you can know peace.”_

Clint shook himself free of the nightmare, sitting up with a stifled gasp. 

It took him a moment to get his bearings. A cool breeze blew through the open bedroom windows along with the sounds of what River called “the dawn chorus.” The little cabin that Clint and River owned in West Virginia was surrounded by woods, and every tree seemed to come with a full complement of birds. Weird how the country could actually be louder than the city sometimes.

Clint rubbed a hand over his face. The nightmare was nothing new. He had been having variations on that one since the night after the Battle of New York. He automatically looked beside him to reassure himself that it hadn’t been real. River was right there, curled on her side, safe and alive and sleeping peacefully. 

She stirred a little and her brow wrinkled up, like she could sense that something was wrong. In another few seconds, that sense was likely to wake her up. Clint leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead and it smoothed out again, and she went on sleeping. Clint slipped out of bed, quietly gathered up some clothes, and went out into the main room of the cabin to get dressed. 

The cabin was small, the furnishings second-hand, worn, and comfortable. It had been Clint and River’s retreat for the past few years, a place to unwind and level out after rough missions, or just to get away from SHIELD for a while. Coulson had urged Clint and River to come down here as soon as Clint was officially cleared to leave the base. They’d hit the road as soon as the sign-off from the Psych department hit Fury’s desk.

Clint pulled on his boots and retrieved his bow and quiver from their spot by the bookcase. He could get in some practice before breakfast. Clint pushed open the front door of the cabin and headed for the practice range he’d set up at the bottom of the small yard.

Target practice has always helped Clint to center himself, even when he’d been a skinny thirteen-year-old kid. It was the combination of the focus and the repetitive movement: Notch an arrow. Take your stance. Draw. Sight the target. Let loose. He’d put in a lot of target practice since the Battle of New York.

Everything was changing so rapidly around him. He and River were Avengers now. Phil might possibly have an actual serious girlfriend if he was able to work things out with Ms. Custis. Earth was collectively getting over the fact that it wasn’t a special snowflake in the universe as far as intelligent life went. It wasn’t that it was all bad, it just took some getting used to.

_A new world._ That’s what River had called it. River took change in stride far better than Clint did. Of course, if anyone knew about starting anew, it was River.

Thanks to her Time Lord DNA, River had regenerated four times over the course of her extended life. She’d described to Clint what it had been like, and it sounded pretty fucking unpleasant. Her dying body would pull itself apart on a cellular level and then reform into a new one. It was painful and confusing and scary. River had once told Clint that nothing in the world had ever terrified her the way her first regeneration had. She’d been very happy to give that ability up, even though it meant a mortal life.

So, yeah, change was rough. It sucked in a lot of ways. It hurt, it was frightening, and it was hard to know which end was up. The only thing you could do was ride it out.

Clint drew and loosed another arrow.

He heard the faint creak of the screen door when River came outside. Clint glanced back toward the cabin and saw that she was still in her pajamas and was carrying two mugs. She settled down on the top porch step, setting one mug beside her and cupping the other in her hands. Clint finished his round, gathered up his arrows, and went to join her.

“Nice form,” River said as he sat down on the step below her.

Clint waggled his eyebrows suggestively as he picked up his mug of coffee. “I’m pretty sure I heard that last night, too.”

River just smirked over the rim of her mug. “It may have been strongly implied,” she agreed. She rested her mug on her knee. “Did you sleep all right?”

The automatic _fine_ was on the tip of his tongue, but River was one of the two people in the world that Clint didn’t lie to.

“Nightmare,” he said. “It wasn’t as bad as some of the other ones have been, though.”

River nodded. The fact that it hadn’t woken her up would have been evidence that the nightmare had been relatively mild. Some of them had had Clint literally kicking and screaming his way back into the waking world.

“It’s normal,” she said.

“I know.”

Neither one of them was new to the fallout of physical and mental trauma. Maybe not on the scale that Loki had dished out, but it was still a routine part of their job.

Clint took a drink of his coffee and leaned back against the stair railing. The sun was well up now. The birds had settled down. They’d probably flown off to do. . .whatever it was that birds did all day.

“I like it here,” he said.

“Me too,” River replied. She gave him a deliberately nonchalant smile. “Maybe we should just stay here.”

Clint could hear the question behind her words. _Any more second thoughts?_

Not second thoughts about going back to SHIELD. Neither one of them had questioned that for a moment. They _had_ revisited the question of being Avengers a few times over the last few weeks. Yes, they’d told Fury they’d join his special superhero task force, but it wasn’t like they’d signed a contract in blood or anything. They could still change their minds.

“Nah,” Clint said, shaking his head. “Phil would never get over it if we backed out now.”

Phil had been so _proud_ when he’d fully processed the fact that Clint and River had been asked to be part of the Avengers Initiative, not to mention excited at the prospect of directly managing the team once he came off of medical leave. One of the unshakable truths of Clint’s life was that he could never stand to disappoint Phil.

“Phil wants what’s best for you,” River pointed out. “Avenger or not.”

“Yeah. I know.” That had been Phil’s M.O. pretty much from Day One. It had taken Clint a while to get used to having someone honestly give a shit about him. “But it’s not just for Phil. It’s for me, too. If the Avengers is all Fury thinks it can be, maybe it’ll let me make up for the things I did.”

River frowned. “Clint, none of that was--”

“My fault. I know.” So everyone kept telling him. “But I still want to make up for it if I can.”

“All right, then. Avengers.” River held out her mug and Clint tapped his against it in solidarity. “It’s just as well. Banner and Stark and Thor aren’t going to have a clue how things work with SHIELD. I’m not altogether sure about Rogers, either. Phil’s going to need us.”

*****

**Steve Rogers**  
 **London, England**

London by night in 2012 was not at all like it had been in 1944.

Steve had stared at the ceiling of his hotel room for hours before he’d given up on sleeping. One o’clock in the morning might not be the greatest time to head out for a walk, but it beat lying in the dark, letting his thoughts chase themselves around his head.

He walked away from his hotel in an ever-expanding spiral, marveling a little at how bright and busy London felt, even at this hour. It wasn’t at all like Steve remembered. Back then the streets had been dark. Windows had been blocked by black-out curtains or cardboard, or just painted over. The street lights had never been switched on. Cars had crept along slowly, their headlights masked by slotted covers, and anyone out walking had carried a flashlight shaded in red. Steve could remember it like it was yesterday. 

Actually, it was more accurate to say that he could remember it like it was eight months ago. From Steve’s perspective, that was the last time he’d been in London. 

The Howling Commandos, along with their support teams, had departed from London on December 11, 1944 to take down the Red Skull. They’d all still been raw from losing Bucky, and were all determined to eliminate Hydra and its leader once and for all. Steve had been prepared to give his life for that goal. And he had, just not in the way he’d thought he was going to when he’d aimed the plane into the icy ocean. Steve’s last memory had been of blue water rushing up the windscreen.

Then he’d woken up in a new world. Sixty-eight years gone in a blink.

He’d spent the last eight months acclimating. SHIELD had assigned him a liaison for the first six months. Agent Antoine Triplett had helped Steve get a jump start on learning everything he needed to know to function in the twenty-first century. As ridiculous as it felt to Steve to be going “back to school” it was necessary. He had almost seventy years of history, politics, science, and pop culture to catch up on. There were also a lot of practical things he needed to learn: using a computer, navigating the internet, sending emails, driving a modern car, using ATMs and cell phones, texting, the importance of not putting metal in a microwave. The list felt endless.

Trip had just rolled with it, unfazed by Steve’s huge knowledge gaps. He reminded Steve of his grandfather, Jacques, in that respect. Not much had ever daunted Frenchie, either. Trip had become Steve’s friend, the only one he’d really made since coming out of the ice. Trip had moved on to working missions in the field (which was what he’d been trained for, not babysitting), but they still kept in contact.

Cell phones and email were newfangled, but they were also damn handy.

Trip had been the one who had urged Steve to go to London already. _Seven hour flight, man. You just saved the world. You can do this._ Fury had likewise encouraged the Avengers to take a little time to themselves, enjoy some well-deserved R &R, and get their heads on straight before the team got down to work. So, Steve had done what he’d been putting off for months. He’d gotten on a plane and gone to see Peggy.

Peggy lived in a nursing home in St. John’s Wood. Steve had been briefed on her condition. Physically, she was in reasonably good health for her age, though she couldn’t get around on her own anymore. Mentally. . .well, she had good days and bad days. Steve had prepared himself for that. He had prepared himself for Peggy to be older. He had even prepared himself to meet her son, Michael, who had been there to help make the visit go smoothly. Peggy knew that Steve had been found, and she knew the _special circumstances,_ but as Michael put it, “Mum’s memory wanders on her bad days. She gets confused, and then she gets upset. If she gets upset, you’re going to have to leave.”

Steve certainly couldn’t fault Michael for looking out for his mother. Intervention hadn’t been necessary, though. Peggy had handled the reunion well, maybe even better than Steve himself had. The visit had still been difficult in many ways. Peggy still looked like Peggy, if much older. She still sounded like Peggy. But seeing her like that, so tired that she could only sit part-way up in bed, had thrown Steve.

Peggy was vulnerable now. Steve had never once, in the short time he’d known her, seen her vulnerable.

They’d talked for a long time, about the old days, about Peggy’s family, about the early days of SHIELD. Peggy hadn’t come in on the ground floor of SHIELD, but she had been one of the Founders’ earliest recruits. She had run the London office, overseeing most of the operations in Europe, for many years. Hearing about Peggy’s involvement smoothed out some of the lingering doubts Steve still felt over going to work for the organization. 

He’d stayed longer than he should have, until Peggy had clearly been flagging and Michael, who had been wandering in and out, had suggested it was time to call a close to the visit. Steve had gone back to his hotel, but he hadn’t been able to settle.

So, he walked. Running would be better, but walking would do.

Steve was so wrapped up in his thoughts that it took him a few minutes to realize he was being followed. The realization elicited more annoyance than it did concern. Steve thought about ducking around a corner and catching his shadow by surprise, but couldn’t work up the ability to give that much of a damn. Instead he stopped in his tracks and did an abrupt about-face. 

His shadow ran right into him, but rather than expressing fear or embarrassment the man just said, “Ooof! Really, Captain. Give a fellow a little warning before you do that.”

Steve stepped back, looking at his shadow in surprise. “Doctor?”

It was. It was Barton and Song’s alien friend. The Doctor straightened his tweed jacket and smoothed down his hair, looking slightly sheepish.

“The same,” he said. “You know, I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last twenty minutes. I landed the TARDIS in your path three times.”

Steve looked over the Doctor’s shoulder and, sure enough, a blue police call box was parked along the sidewalk. Steve vaguely remembered passing call boxes a few times on his walk, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. Seventy years ago (eight months ago) call boxes had been commonplace.

“Sorry. I was distracted.”

“I guess so,” the Doctor replied with a good-humored smile.

“Look, don’t take this the wrong way,” Steve said, “but why are you here?”

Steve had only spoken with the Doctor a few times on the Helicarrier and back in New York. The battle and its aftermath hadn’t exactly left a huge amount of time for making new friends. Steve had heard Agent Song and Agent Barton and their friends, Amy and Rory, talk about the Doctor. He’d heard enough to know that the man was apt to turn up unexpectedly, but usually for a reason.

The Doctor just shrugged.

“I pass through London a lot. I heard from a little bird that you were in town.”

“Uh huh.” Steve narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “A little bird by the name of Fury?”

Not that many people had known about his travel plans. Steve wouldn’t have read Fury in except that he’d needed the Director’s help in setting up the visit with Peggy.

“No, a literal little bird,” the Doctor said. “I speak bird. Every dialect of bird, in fact. Rule number 749. If you want to know what’s going on in a city, just ask the pigeons. They see everything and love to gossip.”

“You speak _bird?”_

“I speak everything.” The Doctor folded his arms. “I take it you’re visiting the old haunts. London must seem very strange now after what you’re used to.”

Steve’s mouth tightened and his eyes drifted back to the TARDIS.

“It’s nice of you to take an interest, Doctor, but unless you’re here to offer me a lift home, I don’t really feel like talking.”

He was being sarcastic, but a childish and optimistic part of Steve hoped that the Doctor would say that that was exactly why he’d come. The thought had been in the back of his head ever since he’d heard the words “time traveler.” Amy had said that the Doctor could go anywhere in Time and Space. How hard could 1944 be?

Fortunately, Steve’s hopes didn’t rise too high. The Doctor just sighed and shook his head. He even looked genuinely regretful.

“I wish I could do that for you.”

“But you won’t,” Steve said.

“I can’t,” the Doctor corrected. 

“That’s not the way I’ve heard it. Your friend, Amy? She likes to tell stories about you.” Steve crossed his arms. _“Time can be rewritten,_ or so she says. Or is that just a catchy phrase?”

The Doctor just looked at him for a moment with an unreadable expression. Then he seemed to mentally shrug.

“All right, then.” He turned, walking back to his TARDIS. Steve stood, staring after him, as he opened the door of the blue box. “Well, come on!” he called.

Steve followed.

He stepped inside the TARDIS carefully. It made his stomach swoop a little, stepping into what should have been a cramped booth and finding himself in a chamber the size of an airplane hanger instead. The Doctor was up on a control platform in the center of the room.

_“Time can be rewritten._ Well that’s true enough,” the Doctor said as Steve climbed up to join him. “Goodness knows, I’ve done it often enough. It’s hard to do when it’s close to your own time stream. It makes for a bumpy ride. Does dreadful things to the shocks. But it can be done.”

Steve couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Could it really be this easy?

The Doctor looked up from his control panel, bracing his hands on it and pinning Steve with a serious look. “The question you need to ask yourself is, are you willing to pay the price?” 

“What do you mean?” Steve asked. “What price?”

“I could take you back to 1944,” the Doctor said. “Well, not _exactly_ take you back. That would mean there would be two of you in 1944, one in the ice and one out of it. But I could go back and make sure you were recovered immediately. That would rewrite the timeline, but here’s the thing you need to understand about rewriting Time. You sacrifice things in the process.

“Say the rescue parties find you right away,” the Doctor continued. “The Howling Commandos keep working missions through the end of the war and maybe beyond. What happens if your old friend, Jacques Dernier, gets killed in action? Your new friend, Antoine, never exists.”

Steve felt his conviction falter a little bit.

“And then there’s Peggy Carter. You’ll have a big, romantic reunion with a near-future forecast of wedding bells. And you may both be very, very happy. But the life she has now—a life that has been good and full—will be undone. Is that something you can live with?”

Steve tried to shove the feeling of guilt aside, but it shoved back, bringing with it the image of Peggy’s room at the nursing home. There had been pictures everywhere. Pictures of Peggy and her husband, of Michael and his two sisters, and of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There had been bits of child-made flotsam and jetsam, pictures colored in scribbles and construction paper cards on the bulletin board and window sills. 

All of that could be wiped away.

“And when the Chitauri come calling on New York City, you’ll be well past your fighting days. Maybe the Avengers will succeed in pushing them back without you. But then again, maybe they won’t.” The Doctor’s tone turned more compassionate. “Time can be rewritten, yes. But it comes at a cost, and it doesn’t fix all of the problems. You’ve lost everything. I know what that’s like, more than you’ll ever understand. But if I know you, and I think I do, you won’t take it back at someone else’s expense.”

“So, what am I supposed to do?” Steve asked, staring down at the glass deck under his feet.

“You can’t go back,” the Doctor said. “So, you go forward.”

“Forward,” Steve said dully. “Forward how? As what?”

“As the leader of the Avengers?” the Doctor suggested. “That’s not a small thing. You’ve already saved the world. Think of where you could go from there. And you’re not alone. You have a team now as I understand.”

“A team,” Steve says wryly. “Is that what they are?”

“I know they’re not the Howling Commandos,” the Doctor said, “but the Howling Commandos weren’t the Howling Commandos at first either, were they? Bucky Barnes aside, they didn’t start out as your friends. That’s something that you gained over time. 

“If you give the Avengers a chance, the same thing can happen. I don’t really know Tony or Bruce, but I knew Thor when he was in the Asgardian equivalent of short pants. He’s an honorable man, which I know is something that’s important to you. I’ve traveled with River and Clint and Phil for a while, now. They’re good people. I think you’ll like them very much if you get to know them.”

Steve nodded silently. He barely knew these people, but he had seen that they were resourceful and brave, and that they cared about each other and the people they protected. They possessed the same qualities that Steve had seen in the men who would become the Howling Commandoes. That was a start.

Steve looked up at the Doctor, straightening his shoulders. “No turning back I guess.” He extended his hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”

The Doctor shook his hand. “For what it’s worth, Captain,” he said, “I think you’ll be brilliant.”

As Steve stood outside on the sidewalk, watching the TARDIS dematerialize, he felt a certain sense of calm. It wasn’t peace, exactly. It didn’t even come close to being happiness. Still, somehow having the option of going back to his old life taken off the table took a lot of the turmoil along with it. By the time he had walked back to his hotel, Steve had come to a decision.

He had to go forward. The one way forward he had seemed to be SHIELD and the Avengers. If that was his path, fine, but there was someone Steve wanted to talk to first.

Meg Downing _had_ encouraged him to contact her at any time if he wanted to talk.

Steve’s flight back to New York was due to depart at 0930 hours. At 0800, Steve was in line at the ticket counter.

“I need to change my travel plans. I need the first available flight to Toronto, please.”

**Author's Note:**

> Next up in the _Marvelous Tale_ ‘verse, Steve goes to Toronto to see ~~the wizard~~ the woman who helped found SHIELD and get a little insight into its origins.


End file.
